


the projectionist

by sullypants



Series: night moves [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Recreational Drug Use, Summer Vibes, also probably no murder in this universe, in which they never dated, so do with all that what you will, there's some comicverse vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: The summer before senior year, Jughead spends his days and nights in a ceaseless rotation.An evening shift at the drive-in; late-night writing session at Pop’s; sleep until early afternoon; get stoned in his bedroom, streaming a ten-hour loop of “The Big Ship” on YouTube, the tab kept perpetually open on his browser.The summer before college, Jughead spends his days and nights with Betty Cooper.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: night moves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713856
Comments: 74
Kudos: 145
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	the projectionist

**Author's Note:**

> loveleee: summer vibes?
> 
> me: [sucks my teeth]
> 
> This follows [these two stories](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701841), but can be read independently.
> 
> With thanks to stillscape—queen of insight, goddess of knowledge. Also to several friends who suggested films; they know who they are.

_In my memory, the weight of the air on summer nights made possibility seem like a substance I could hold in my hand._

  
  
  
  
  
  


The summer before senior year, Jughead spends his days and nights in a ceaseless rotation. 

An evening shift at the drive-in; late-night writing session at Pop’s; sleep until early afternoon; get stoned in his bedroom, streaming a ten-hour loop of “The Big Ship” on YouTube, the tab kept perpetually open on his browser. 

The summer before college, Jughead spends his days and nights with Betty Cooper. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On what might be called their first date—if Jughead was bold enough to ask Betty if this _was_ a date—they go to Pop’s.

This is perhaps what leads to the cognitive dissonance regarding… _whatever_ it is they’re doing. It’s an activity they’ve performed an infinite number of times in the past four years—never mind the years before that, stretching back before either of them had even begun to form memories. 

But now there is no ulterior purpose. 

There are no Blue & Gold edits to discuss, and no study sessions to be fueled by Pop’s bottomless refills of coffee.

Graduation has come and gone. Photos have been taken and forgotten or stuck to the fridge—with parents, with friends, with siblings, with grandparents, with the family dog. Riverdale High’s senior class were suddenly loose the shackles of their academic schedules, leaving their undergraduate compatriots to shuffle drearily through slightly-emptier corridors. 

The town feels quiet. It reminds Jughead a bit of playing hooky—a not infrequent activity of his sophomore year, broken only by the stubborn persistence of the girl who sits across a formica table from him on this mild-if-overcast day in late May. 

(With the onset of summer, and thus an increase in shifts at the Twilight Drive-In, Jughead becomes something of an obsessive checker of his weather app. 

Nobody comes to the drive-in when it rains, even though they come in their cars. The logic escapes him.) 

The oddness of being a recent graduate, with few actual responsibilities, feels uncanny. It makes Jughead feel listless, and uncertain of himself. 

As does the fact that very recently, he and Betty had spent several hours tumbling around on a bed during Veronica Lodge’s post-prom party, lips locked, hands roaming. 

He’d woken next to her, sensing himself in unfamiliar air, among unfamiliar sheets (slightly damp), and a subtle whiff of chlorine. 

And then they’d skirted around one another during their final week at Riverdale High—in the Blue & Gold, at Pop’s, at graduation rehearsal—until eight days had passed. Jughead felt himself stirred from inertia as he helped Betty pack up the editor’s desk post-graduation, and he’d finally blurted out—

“Wanna go to Pop’s?”

Betty had looked up from the bankers’ box in which she’d been filing back-issues.

“Now?” she’d asked, and Jughead had shrugged. He felt so far from casual that a passing jet might have noticed.

“No.” He’d shaken his head. “No, like—this week. We could go to Pop’s.” He tugs his beanie down a little lower over his ears. “Us.” 

Betty’s brow had risen at his inflection, and the corner of her mouth had quirked. She looked back down at the box and nodded.

“Yeah, let’s.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Sitting across the table from her doesn’t feel odd; he orders his regular, she orders hers, and they carry on. 

Their conversation is familiar. They discuss summer jobs (he at the drive-in, she part-time for the Register); her volunteering plans (the Riverdale Public Library); his sister’s disdain ahead of band camp; the trip her parents are planning to take in August. 

He feels a deep-set longing for her in his chest when she speaks about the classes she wants to enroll in at Columbia in the fall. He watches her eyes flick between his own and then out into space, as though the idea she is seeking to convey can be plucked from the air, ripe and heavy.

Betty Cooper is optimistic. As a natural misanthrope, Jughead feels it’s almost inevitable, surely evidence of the law of opposites, that he should feel this level of attraction toward her. 

Jughead hadn’t noticed when he started feeling… _whatever_ this is for Betty. He wonders if perhaps it’s been around a lot longer than he’s willing to admit.

(He also thinks he needs to perhaps figure out _whatever_ means, if only because he prides himself on so rarely being lost for words.)

But it’s hard to tell. It’s easy to like Betty; everyone likes Betty. She is kind, she is pretty. When she smiles at you she meets your eye. She is the editor of the school paper, three-time varsity cross-country champion, part-time copy-editor for the Riverdale Register, Riverdale Public Library junior-volunteer coordinator, salutatorian of their graduating class. Her hair curls, gently, in a counter-clockwise direction. 

It’s not until Archie slides into the booth next to Betty that Jughead remembers they’re not the only people in the diner.

“Hey, guys,” he greets them, as genial as ever. 

Betty slides deeper into the booth to accommodate him, but Jughead doesn’t miss the shuttered look that crossed her face. She stops talking about freshman English electives to greet Archie. 

Archie, predictably, launches into a conversation about an upcoming concert in Seaside. He steals a fry from the plate at the center of the table, and Jughead watches Betty as she watches Archie. 

(Betty Cooper is polite.)

In a _whoosh_ of black linen and cream cotton, Veronica appears at Archie’s elbow. She latches onto his bicep with a grip that even Jughead perceives as firm, and her eyes circle between the three of them. 

“Archiekins, Cheryl and I want to chat carpooling to this show with you. Come sit with us.”

“Oh, I figured we’d all drive over together in Reggie’s—”

“Come! Our salads are getting cold,” Veronica interrupts, tugging Archie’s arm and nodding back towards where Cheryl sits, arm draped over the back of the booth, watching their foursome through narrowed eyes. Jughead thinks he notices Veronica and Betty exchange a glance, but it’s gone before he can read it.

Archie, ever genial, shrugs. He grabs a handful of fries and stands. 

“See ya, Juggie; bye, Betts.” 

With a nod in farewell, he follows Veronica. 

Jughead feels the air return to his lungs. He idly stirs a fry in his ketchup, and he when he looks up, Betty is watching him. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He walks her home. She leans in to kiss him, and before he realizes it’s happening, the red door of the Cooper house has closed behind her.

  
  
  
  
  
  


On a hot and sunny Wednesday, perhaps the first real summery day of the season, he’s halfway to the drive-in and certain to be just a little late for his shift, when he notices a flash of gold hair and white skin and blue nylon on the shoulder of the road. 

The heat and humidity has begun to break as the sun shifts lower in the sky. The air almost looks blue.

With a peek in the rearview to confirm no one is behind him, he slows to a crawl and pulls closer to the side of the road. 

Her pace does not change for a few moments, and he’s sure he’s startled her into fear ( _who is this weirdo following her on the road?_ ) when she finally turns her head and sees him.

She smiles in a flash of white teeth, and her gait immediately slows to a walk, and then a gentle stop. He slows the truck in turn, keeping his foot on the brake. 

“What are you even training for anymore?” he asks, and her breath, already heavy, comes out almost like a laugh, but she doesn’t say anything in response. She walks closer to the truck, leans her arms into the passenger-side window. 

“It’s either sunset or sunrise,” she explains between breaths, and he nods in understanding, as though he has any experience with consistent physical activity that doesn’t concern a video game controller, or the lifting of 35 mm reels. 

She points her index finger at him. “Hey, I wanted to ask you—you should come to the barbecue.” Her finger moves forward in a slight circle towards him. “For Memorial Day.” 

“Free food?” He nods, feeling a little giddy. He tells himself to _relax_. 

“Burgers, hot dogs. My mother’s condescension, Mr. Andrew’s mojitos that he’ll leave unattended—” again she points at him—”why not?” After a beat she adds, “I’m making the pies.”

After she tells him when to arrive, he begs off—his shift. She asks what’s on the schedule for the evening (a superhero sequel, his heart skips a little when she wrinkles her nose), and then waves farewell before slowly returning to her pace.

His eyes flick back-and-forth between the road ahead of him and at her in the rearview, moving forward in space. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The grass of the Cooper lawn is pristine. Jughead wonders if Mr. Cooper trims the edges with a pair of scissors (or Mr. Cooper’s hired landscapers; this is Elm Street, Jughead reminds himself). He’s only ever seen that sort of thing in cartoons. He wonders if people actually do it. The Joneses have never maintained much of a lawn. 

In contrast, the line where the yard meets the neighboring plot of the Andrews household is easily identifiable, a subtle profusion of slightly-taller, slightly-crabbier green meeting the meticulously maintained Cooper Kentucky bluegrass. 

Jughead tries not to focus on these details; he tries to bring himself back into his body, into the environment to focus on the people around him—the Cooper family, the Andrews family, the Mantles, the Doileys, the Klumps, the Lopezes, the Woodses. 

(He is the only Jones.)

When he’d arrived at Betty’s house he’d found her still in the garage, under the hood of an old Stingray on blocks, cheek smudged with grease. 

(It is adorable, he thinks, and rolls his eyes at himself mentally.)

She’d smiled at him and welcomed him with a “Hey, Juggie!” that he tried not to smile too widely at in response. 

She brought him to the backyard, pushed a cola into his hand, and disappeared upstairs, presumably to wipe the grease from her face and change out of the clothes she’d been working in. 

(Jughead tries not to let his mind dwell on the idea of a naked Betty Cooper, changing in her bedroom.) 

Thankfully, he soon finds himself joined by Archie, and they sit on a set of plastic-weave lounge chairs, observing Mr. Cooper scrape the grill and discuss what sounds like town zoning bylaws with Mr. Doiley. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He doesn’t get a chance to talk with Betty. Her time is (to Jughead’s perception) monopolized by her mother; she carries trays laden with food back and forth between the kitchen to the patio. She assists her father in plating each burger; she hands a fully-stocked plate off to each guest in turn. 

Jughead talks with Archie, and with Mr. Andrews, and Dilton, and even Moose, who’d come along with Midge. Every few minutes his eyes roam the yard to take stock of where Betty is. Archie doesn’t appear to notice his distraction, but Jughead thinks Mr. Andrews’s eyes twinkle knowingly, but thankfully, he doesn’t say a thing. 

Jughead has lost track of Betty by the time he manages to escape Dilton’s monologue about his latest Gryphons & Gargoyles campaign. He finds himself by the grill, where Mr. Cooper still reigns.

Mr. Cooper turns to ask if he wants a burger or a hot dog, and Jughead considers, briefly, before deciding not to push his luck by asking for both.

“Two burgers?” he requests, and Mr. Cooper nods. As is typical of his experience with the Cooper household, there appears to be a bountiful, never-ending supply of things to eat. 

“What are you up to in the fall, Jughead?” Mr. Cooper asks him, flipping the patties with ease, and Jughead slides into his talking-with-parents mode, still feeling slightly on edge.

“Albany. Not sure of major yet.” Mr. Cooper nods, slides both burger patties onto a paper plate, handing it to Jughead. “They gave me a good financial aid package,” he adds.

“Very good.” Mr. Cooper nods at the table behind him. “Buns and garnishes on the table.”

“Thanks.” Jughead feels he has dodged something, but isn’t entirely sure what. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He leaves when Archie and Ginger do. He scans the lawn for Betty; she’s standing with Mrs. Doiley and Mrs. Andrews. When he waves at her, she smiles and waves back. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


A few days later, Betty shows up at the projection booth door as he’s rewinding _The Graduate_.

He’s kicking himself for not rewinding it the night previously; he’d been feeling lazy, and figured the only person he’d be harming was his future self.

His once-future-now-present self does not appreciate the selfishness. 

She arrives bearing three slices of leftover leftover pie (two blueberry, one strawberry-rhubarb.)

She tells him about her morning at the Register, her afternoon at the library, her early evening run. Jughead notices that the end of her ponytail is still damp. 

“Who’d you come with?” Jughead asks her, lifting the first reel to the projector’s supply reel.

Betty is watching closely, with interest, as he threads the film, and she looks back up to shake her head at him.

“Just me.”

Jughead busies himself with the projector, and Betty peeks out of the projection window. In the lot, some cars have begun to depart, but one or two more are just arriving. The lights of the lot, bright between shows, make the sky look especially dark. 

Forcing himself to finally look up he asks, “You want to watch from here?”

Betty smiles at him, nodding.

“Definitely. Want some Twizzlers from the concession stand?” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


When Betty shows up at the projection booth again, during a showing of _The Hitchhiker_ , Jughead realizes that this might mean something; it’s actually happening. 

He’s just not certain what _it_ is.

Before his next shift, he makes certain to leave the spare stool on the opposite side of the projector from where he usually sits. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Where’s Kevin?” he thinks to ask during _Tea and Sympathy_. 

“Interning for Mayor McCoy.”

He nods. A moment later:

“Veronica?”

“Ah,” Betty smiles and twirls her hand in the air. “She’s spending a lot of time with Cheryl.” She throws him a significant look, one even he can read. He raises his eyebrows and nods.

“What’s that about?”

“Not sure yet, still figuring it out, but I’m sure Kevin has an opinion.” Jughead laughs.

“What about Arch?”

Her head cocks in question, but she still smiles. 

“Your friend, too, Jug.” She raises her eyebrows, turns her eyes back to the screen. “Working for his dad this summer. I also think he’s trying to get band practice onto some kind of regular schedule.”

Jughead makes a thoughtful noise at the back of his throat; he chuckles and then asks: 

“Stuck with me then, huh?”

Betty turns to smile at him again.

“No, you’re stuck with me.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


After _Cinema Paradiso_ is rewound and filed carefully back onto the shelf, Jughead turns to Betty, standing by the door to the booth, her arms crossed over her chest. 

Her eyes look glassy. As the film had ended, as they’d watched Alfredo’s reel of stolen kisses, he’d heard a quiet snuffle from the other side of the projector.

“I’ll drive you home?” he asks.

She hesitates. “Do you want to go for a ride?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


They meander through town in his father’s truck. Betty hasn’t given him a destination, so he simply drives. 

Pop’s, of course, still glows brightly at this odd hour, somehow both late and early. Main Street is desolate, and when they get trapped at the sticky red light at the junction of route 28, Jughead turns right-on-red twice, crossing the yellow line to escape. 

He’s not sure where he’s driving, or where Betty might _want_ him to drive, until—

“We should go to the swimming hole.”

“Now?” His eyebrows raise, but he keeps his gaze on the road. 

“Why not? No one will be there, we’ll have it all to ourselves. I haven’t swum there since...maybe two summers ago?” She leans forward and turns the radio up a little. 

Nodding, he indicates a left turn. They haven’t passed a single car since crossing the railroad tracks.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The swimming hole, nestled a few hundred yards into the woods down a bumpy fire road, is predictably dark, the water still and black. 

Jughead pulls the truck as close as he can manage and kills the engine, keeping the headlights on. 

He thinks to leave the radio on as well, turning the volume low. From the spot Betty picks at the edge of the water, it’s only a faint melody when the breeze drifts in their direction. 

She sits with her legs stretched out in front of her, resting back on her palms. The skirt of her sundress creates a golden-yellow arc around her, stark against the evening dark of the grass. 

Jughead lets his body fall down next to her, wraps his elbows around his knees, clasps his wrists in front of him. From behind them, he can hear the click of the truck’s engine as it cools; above him, the buzz of cicadas. He watches Betty out of the corner of his eye, and she watches the water. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“My parents are separating,” she announces.

Jughead turns his head to look at her, and she looks back. He doesn’t think she seems sad, but he knows Betty has always been good at keeping anything Alice Cooper might deem _unpleasant_ or _nobody’s business_ to herself.

“Were they just...waiting for you to graduate? Last-one-out-the-house sort of thing?” he asks, and when she nods, he mimics the motion. He’s silent, hoping if he is, she’ll continue to speak. 

“Couldn’t even get through the summer, I guess.” She shrugs. “I think their August trip might have something to do with it, a last-ditch sort of thing. They probably won’t be going on it. Obviously.” 

She turns back to face the water and her feet, crossed at the ankles, windshield-wiper a little back and forth.

“My mom still might, though, with a couple of her friends. Dad’s staying at a ShareBnB for now.” She fiddles with the hem of her dress and her ear drops to her shoulder in a shrug. “I mean—you saw them at the barbecue.” 

Jughead thinks back to Memorial Day, realizing that he hadn’t seen Mr. and Mrs. Cooper share one word in the course of the afternoon. Several platters heaped with raw burger patties, but no words.

“I guess you know a bit about this sort of thing.” Her head turns again to meet his eyes, and he nods his agreement. 

It has been several years since his mother had left, and a little less than two since her divorce from his father—rather freshly sober at the time—became official. He and Jellybean ( _JB_ , he corrects himself) see her at holidays, but even still—there’s a new kind of distance between them, and he’s not sure how to manage it. 

He sometimes wonders what it’s like for JB—six years younger than him—to have lost the regular influence of the most important woman in her life, however unreliable that woman might have been.

He wonders how Betty might have reacted had her parents separated when she was JB’s age, instead of the newly-legal adult she is. 

Betty is resilient. Of all the people Jughead has known in his life, he thinks no one is perhaps more primed to make the transition from childhood to adulthood than Betty Cooper. 

She _is_ resilient, he muses; but resilient people aren’t indestructible. They’re just...more adaptable. Betty has always been a person who, when she falls and scrapes her knee, bounces back immediately. Jughead doesn’t know if this is something she does innately, or if it was a skill she learned at the mercy of great expectations. 

He wonders if it came at the price of something else, but he doesn’t know what that price might have been, nor does he know how to even begin to speculate.

Jughead nods, even though she’s turned back to the water and does not see. From the radio in the truck behind them he hears Ozzy softly croon, _I feel unhappy, I feel so sad_ , and he thinks that reality can sometimes be so unrealistic.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Falling into old conversations, they discuss what they’re reading. Jughead teases her a little to learn she’s revisiting _The Bell Jar_ , but not as much as she teases him for his plan of working through as much Fitzgerald as he can over the course of the summer. But she points out the aptness of this; that there’s some essential quality of _summer_ in Fitzgerald, and he’s eager to agree. 

“Maybe we should run _Gatsby_ at the drive-in?” 

She wrinkles her nose at him in confusion. “Baz Luhrmann?”

Jughead scoffs. “No; Redford _Gatsby_. Although it’s not very good. Better than that one though.”

Betty makes a _mmm_ noise. “I _did_ like how colorful and modern it looked. It seemed like a good style choice.” 

He narrows his eyes at her, making his own skeptical-sounding _mmm_. “You’re lucky I like you, Betty,” he tells her, and feels pleased when she laughs. 

“At least you’re over your Salinger phase.”

He shakes his head. “Please—no one is ever over their Salinger phase, Betty. It just lies dormant.” 

“I hope I’ll still have some time to read for pleasure once school starts,” she says. “I’m...actually not really looking forward to it.” She scrunches her nose again, as though it’s a confession of guilt.

“Do you not want to go to Columbia?” he asks. Should anyone be Ivy League-bound, it would be Betty; to Jughead, there’d never been any question. When he learned where she’d applied, none of it had surprised him—several Ivies, one or two small liberal arts colleges with recognizable names, and a token safety school. 

She shakes her head emphatically in disagreement. “No, no, I do.” She’s silent for a beat. “I just didn’t want it for me as much as they wanted it for me.” She bites her bottom lip before continuing. “I don’t think any college or place has had that for me.”

Jughead makes a thoughtful noise, but doesn’t say anything in response. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Are you coming to Cheryl’s for the Fourth?”

Jughead bobs his head a little, back and forth. Betty gives him a look that suggests he’s not kidding anyone with this show of wavering.

“You have a couple weeks to decide, but you should. I think you’ll have fun.” She smiles at the look of incredulity he shares with her. “Come on.” Her smile fades a little, and he almost misses it before she brightens again. “You came to the Lodge Lodge after prom.” Her eyes widen in emphasis. “You came to _prom_ , Jug.”

She leans back against her palms. 

“You did a lot this year, Juggie.” Her eyes seem to search his face, and she faces the water for a moment, before turning back to him. “You know that, right?” 

Her voice is so soft Jughead almost misses it. In this posture, his shoulders are up around his ears, and he feels cocooned. Betty sits in a way that seems, in this moment, open. 

He stretches out his legs, and mimics her, leaning back onto his elbows.

She’s not wrong. Senior year _had_ been different. He’s just surprised she’d noticed. 

“You think so?”

“Yeah.” She gestures upward with her palm, a physical _I mean_. “Where’s your hat?” 

“The glove box,” he tells her, and she laughs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Do you want to swim?”

Jughead startles out of the comfortable silence into which they’ve fallen.

“No suits,” he shrugs.

Betty cants her head toward him in amusement, a smile on her face. 

“Come on, Juggie. When’s that ever stopped anyone?” 

For a moment Jughead can’t find words, but then he sweeps his arm in an arc before them. 

“After you.”

She smiles and stands, kicking off her Keds. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead turns his back to her, and before his brain can catch up with him, he hears her splash into the water with a small yelp.

“It’s cold,” she calls back to him, and he watches her swim out toward the center of the pond.

Her dress rests atop her now-vacant spot on the grass, neatly folded and aligned with her empty shoes. 

He follows her lead, and heads into the water. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


It _is_ cold.

But as he begins to move, his limbs slowly warm. Betty swims the circumference of the swimming hole, and he treads water at its center. 

He looks up at the dark shapes of pine trees against the deep blue of the sky, and lets his head fall backwards, floats, hearing only the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. From this angle he can still see the rope swing where it hangs low over the water. 

He thinks about what Betty had said, about what she’d observed of him in the past year. He hadn’t realized anyone was paying attention. 

“Hey.”

His head whips back out of the water, and he spins until he sees her, treading water a few feet behind him. 

“How can you see with all that hair in your eyes?” she teases him, and he tosses his head back, pushes his hair off his forehead.

“You startled me,” he argues with a grin. 

Her chin dips into the water when she smiles. 

She swims closer, and when she wraps her arms around his shoulders, he wraps his own around her waist, and leans in to kiss her. 

  
  
  
  
  


As June passes, the days also settle into familiar patterns. 

Jughead sleeps late, unless he has to drive JB to band camp. He’ll often go back to bed for an hour or two once he’s dropped her off. His father works the night shift, so the trailer is quiet during the day while his father sleeps. 

The days are similar to the previous summer’s, but for the fact that he spends so much time with Betty. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


By the time Princess Buttercup and Westley confront the R.O.U.S.es, he and Betty are sitting on opposite sides of the projector, watching the film in silence through the window. There’s a _rat-tat-tat_ on the door of the booth.

At his answering call, the door opens and Reggie Mantle swings into the room. Two people in the booth are comfortable, three is a crowd.

“Juggalo! Oh—hey, Betty Boop.” Reggie nods at Betty, who gives him a small wave, but is otherwise focused on the screen. 

Jughead stands. He notices Reggie’s eyes narrow at Betty, watches those eyes shift toward him with a canny look.

Mercifully, Reggie seems to resist saying anything, and jumps into explaining his presence in the projection booth of the Twilight Drive-In at eleven fifty-four on a Saturday night. 

“You need a re-up, buddy?” Reggie raises his eyebrows at him in question.

Jughead is silent for a beat. He peeks at Betty out of the corner of his eye, but her gaze remains fixed on the screen. The room’s small, so there’s no avoiding her hearing every word of this conversation. 

Jughead realizes this ship sailed a long time ago.

“Ah,” he thinks out loud. “No. No, I don’t think so, actually.” 

By pure happenstance, this summer has been more sober than the last one. It’s not a choice, so much as it is merely a circumstance of his schedule. He’s spending more time among people this year. 

He’s spending more time with Betty. 

Reggie nods, and cuffs him on the shoulder, makes a clicking noise with his mouth.

“Alright, you let me know. Catch you later.” To Betty he offers a genial “See ya, Coop.” 

Jughead nods goodbye, and Betty gives him a soft _bye_ from her stool, hardly audible over the click of the projector’s shuttle.

Jughead thinks Reggie Mantle has finally managed to have an interaction with some measure of tact, but then—

Reggie’s half-in, half-out of the booth before he swings his torso back into the room, weight on the doorknob. He swivels his index finger in the air between the two of them.

“Remember—no glove, no love.” 

Reggie ducks the balled flannel Jughead aims at his head, cackling as he closes the door behind him. Betty sends him off with a monotone chorus of _boo_ s.

Jughead rolls his eyes to himself, returns to the stool on his side of the projector. 

He avoids turning his head in Betty’s direction. Her gaze remains firmly directed out the window in front of her.

Out of the corner of his eye, over the top of the projector, he thinks he sees a slight tinge of pink in her cheekbones. But the booth is dark, and perhaps it’s just a reflection from the screen. 

Westley awakens to candlelight in the Pit of Despair. 

  
  
  
  
  


On a Sunday before his shift, he spends several hours in the garage at the Andrews house.

Archie strums on a guitar, and Jughead rolls several joints for him. Archie has never quite mastered it, and Jughead is happy to help—he isn’t supplying the weed, but usually still gets to partake. 

Ginger arrives—Midge and Moose in tow—and Jughead takes it as his cue to head off to the drive-in for the first show. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The late movie becomes something like a routine. 

The eight o’clock showing is usually a recent blockbuster, or a second run flick—aimed to bring in families, crowds. He projects what he’s told to project. 

(He sees what he deems a lot of subpar movies.)

Jughead has more domain over the late night film—repertory classics, and b-horror schlockfests. He’s subject merely to his whims and the vagaries of the licensees of the reels themselves.

(Try as he might, and for three years he had in vain, a copy of _The Day the Earth Stood Still_ had not yet come within grasping range.)

He works the early shift solo, but Betty more often than not appears for the late show. 

Sometimes, she’ll bring him a burger from Pop’s, which he’ll shovel down his throat—especially if he hasn’t been able to run over to the concession stand between shows. He splits the fries with her. 

She hums along with the concession stand cartoons; the hot dog that does its flip, the parade of ice cream cups waving their spoons.

When the movie ends, and the audience files out of the lot in their cars, he rewinds the reels. 

He files the ones to be replayed soon back onto the shelf; he packs those en route to the next theater into the insulated box in which they’d arrived, leaving the box next to the door for his manager to collect in the morning. 

The cleaning crew sweeps through the lot, picking off litter. Eventually, one-by-one, the lights begin to switch off until the last one remaining is the hazy bulb above the projection booth door. 

Jughead is usually the last to leave in the evening. He likes the quiet.

But it also becomes the time he spends alone with Betty. 

Once he places the box next to the door, and she’s capped the lens of the projector and draped the drop cloth over it (never mind that he tells her she doesn’t need to do this, that this is _his_ job), he’ll grab his messenger bag from where it hangs behind the door, reach out for her, and they’ll leave the lot hand-in-hand.

But sometimes they’ll delay.

Sometimes, they’ll find themselves settled onto the single, overstuffed armchair that lives in the corner of the booth, under the shelf of reels for current screenings. 

Betty will lean into him, and she’ll place her warm lips onto his, and they’ll kiss. 

It’s here that Jughead loses complete track of time. It could be seven PM, it could be four AM, for all that he is aware of the clock moving steadily forward. 

For however long they are there, his only thoughts are the curve of Betty’s waist under his hand, the line of Betty’s jaw, and the warmth of Betty’s mouth as it moves against his own.

After a screening of—of all things— _Evil Dead 2_ , Betty moves his hand under her t-shirt. 

Following _Wings of Desire_ , the same hand finds itself unbuttoning her cut-offs, sliding below the waistband of her underwear, into a searing heat that he’s not sure he could possibly describe.

(He spends several hours and several hundred words trying to make sense of it the next day on his laptop at Pop’s, before hitting select-all and deleting everything he’s written.)

Before _Rashomon_ has even ended (despite Jughead’s best intentions, the lot is emptier than usual), Betty’s hand is palming the crotch of his jeans, and he nearly misses a reel change. 

After _Splendor in the Grass_ , and before he realizes what’s happening, Betty is on her knees between his legs, her hands resting gently on his thighs. Her eyes glow up at him, and his own go very wide.

“You—you…” He doesn’t quite know what he’s trying to say. He feels a little dizzy. 

Betty rubs her palms gently up and down the length of his thighs, and the warmth of her hands burns through his jeans. It feels comforting. 

She makes a thoughtful noise, and she keeps eye contact.

“Do you....not want to?” 

She asks with such an innately Betty Cooper note of inquisitiveness that Jughead feels a rush of affection toward her. It is the tone she uses to ask a leading question when he pitches a half-assed idea for a Blue & Gold article; it is the voice he hears when she challenges his convictions over milkshakes at Pop’s, the voice from the edge of the swimming hole when she asked if he knew how different his year had seemed, how different _he_ had been. 

The sound of it washes through his chest, collides and mixes with the molten _want_ that also stirs there, so similar and yet not at all the same.

Jughead’s not sure how to respond, but something instinctual in the back of his mind finally does the work for him. 

“I’m not gonna say that.”

The pleased-as-punch look that flashes across Betty’s face pushes another wave of emotion through his chest. 

Not breaking her gaze, he reaches out and brushes a lock of hair behind her ear. She leans into his palm. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On a hot and humid Monday, the drive-in closed, he spends the afternoon at Sweetwater River. 

Archie has invited so many of them, and they sprawl across the rocks in small groups, laid out on towels or blankets. They share a single, giant-size tube of sunscreen, and Jughead watches Betty over the spine of his book as she rubs it up and down her arms, as she turns to let Cheryl slather it onto her back. She lifts her hair off her neck, and catches Jughead’s eye. She smiles at him.

He doesn’t swim, but he also doesn't do too much reading. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


When Jughead thinks to ask Betty, during a showing of _Breathless_ , where her parents think she is, he’s surprised by her answer.

“Here,” Betty says with a shrug; she noisily sips vanilla cola through her straw.

“At the drive-in?”

She nods. “With you.”

Jughead swings his head to meet her eyes in skepticism, but Betty nods.

“No, really,” she insists emphatically.

The Coopers have always kept their children on a short leash. Even Jughead had been able to see this. For them to suddenly give their baby daughter—freshly eighteen-years old—free reign, seemed unlikely.

“She might think you’re a _ruffian_ ”—(Betty’s impression of her mother is enough to send an involuntary chill through up his spine)—“but she doesn’t think you’re…” 

She searches for the word: “Trouble.” 

Jughead raises his eyebrows and turns back to the window.

“Who am I to correct her?” Betty teasingly asks him, and Jughead laughs. 

Betty had insisted; her mother was even taking occasional weekend trips away, she said, trusting her to keep the house standing while they were gone. Her father was still staying at a ShareBnB. 

“You could come over sometime,” she suggests. She twirls her straw around the bottom of her plastic cup. “If you wanted to hang out. We could watch a movie there instead,” she jokes. “Maybe I’ll get to pick.”

Jughead nods, and feels heat behind his ears. He ducks his head and prepares to thread the next reel. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On a rainy Friday—forecast not promising, and likelihood of drive-in cancellation high—Jughead drops Jellybean off at camp in the morning, and drives to Betty’s house instead of going home to sleep.

She doesn’t work at the Register on Fridays. They drive to Pop’s for breakfast and after, take the truck over Sweetwater River and into Greendale to visit the bookstore there.

They find parking several shops down from the storefront, and Betty waits for him on the sidewalk, hand outstretched for his. She entwines their fingers, and doesn’t let him go until she leaves him in the fiction section. 

He leaves with a used paperback copy of _Tender is the Night_ that she’s found for him, misshelved among the memoirs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


They haven’t discussed... _them_ , the _whatever_ , as Jughead has come to think of it.

He avoids thinking about this, much as he avoids thinking about Columbia, about Albany, about the end of summer.

He wonders if she’s talked about him to Veronica, or to Kevin. He contemplates telling Archie—but what to tell? 

He’s not intentionally hiding anything. He also wonders if the weird history between Archie and Betty—a relationship that didn’t seem to Jughead to be exactly _romantic_ , but also not exactly _not_ -romantic—might complicate that conversation. It's always made him think of an odd game of musical chairs.

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s not until Jughead’s father walks into the trailer one evening to find a shirtless Betty Cooper on the couch beneath his son that Jughead is forced to contemplate how other people, people beside him or Betty, might perceive their _whatever_. 

Nothing has proceeded further beyond the removal of Betty’s t-shirt, and for this Jughead is grateful. The feeling is such a one-eighty, he has a sense of whiplash. 

His father, flustered, escapes to the kitchen, and Betty makes her exit, her sternum flushed the most gorgeous shade of pinky-red Jughead thinks he’s ever seen. 

She pulls her t-shirt on and quickly leaves the trailer, cheekbones pink, pecking Jug on his cheek, yelling “Goodbye, Mr. Jones!” and ducking her head to avoid meeting his father’s eyes as she passes the kitchen. It happens in all of ninety seconds. 

Jughead—trying to rip the band aid off as quickly as possible—closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and trudges into the kitchen.

His father looks bemused as he leans against the kitchen counter, raising a brow when Jughead enters the room.

“Don’t—” Jughead starts, and his father stays him with a hand.

“I’m—I’m not going to say anything,” his father stumbles. “I just want to know that you’re being, you know.” He nods with his chin, indicating vaguely into the air. “Safe.”

Jughead immediately scrunches his eyes closed and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “Oh, Jesus—”

“Hey,” his father, speaking over him, “You can either do this with me, or you can do it with Alice Cooper.” 

Jughead balks before he can school his expression. His father barks a laugh. 

Jughead can feel the heat of the blood in his ears, his cheeks. “ _Yes_ ,” he says emphatically, raising his own staying hand. 

His father narrows his eyes slightly, before nodding and walking past him, towards the drawer where they keep the folder stuffed full of take-out menus.

“Have you eaten dinner yet?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Not long into _Beetlejuice_ , while Adam and Barbara are trying their best to haunt the Deetzes out of their home, and after Jughead has finished the burger Betty has brought him, she turns her head slightly to look at him, chin resting in her palm, a thoughtful expression across her face. 

“Do you want to have sex with me, Jug?”

As sometimes feels typical of his very existence, he has the great misfortune to be mid-sip and immediately chokes, nearly spitting cola back into his straw.

“Oh! Sorry, I’m sorry!” Betty grimaces in apology. 

Jughead pats his chest, holds a staying hand out towards her; he shakes his head.

He’s a little hoarse when he tells her, “No, no, it’s fine, I’m fine.”

They’re silent. Betty turns her attention back through the projection window. 

“What a segue, Betts.” She smiles at the screen. 

Jughead knows Betty is giving him space, letting him take the lead in this moment, but it feels fragile. He feels something for Betty that he knows he hasn’t experienced before. He doesn’t have much experience with dating, let alone relationships. 

Over the years he’s observed his peers with a kind of authorial detachment. Archie loved girls, loved dating girls, and Jughead had a front-row seat for every meet-cute, every flirtation, every break up, and every time Archie bounced back like a life-sized Weeble. 

Jughead has often wondered how Archie managed to make it to eighteen without some kind of open chest-wound, given the number of times he’d had his heart broken. 

He is loath to utilize sports metaphors, but aptly, Betty has left the ball in his court. 

“I…” He begins. Betty turns her head to face him again. Her expression seems so open and vulnerable that Jughead feels like she has reached right into his chest and...unbuttoned his heart a little. _If his heart wore a shirt_ , he supposes. There’s so much breaking and tearing and ripping in heart metaphors, and none of it quite suits the moment in which he finds himself.

The moment he finds himself in _with Betty_. 

“Yeah,” he says. He waits a beat before continuing, and mercifully, Betty is patient. She has always been so patient with him. Jughead half-thinks he’s never deserved it, but also knows that Betty would argue that he deserves _more_. 

“Yeah, I...would,” he says. “Eventually.” Keeping her gaze feels so difficult, until she smiles at him. She nods. 

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” he nods back at her, and hopes she understands it’s really _thank you._

  
  
  
  
  
  


On the Fourth of July, Betty drives them both to Thornhill in the Stingray. 

(It isn’t quite finished, she tells him, but it’s functioning. To Jughead it looks as good as done, but her statement alarms him a little. He reminds himself that Betty is probably the most responsible eighteen-year old he knows.)

Thornhill sits high in the hills above Riverdale, with a long lawn that sweeps down to Eversgreen Forest and to the river beyond. He’s been here before, if very briefly, tagging along with Archie. Betty tells him that there is an excellent vantage of the fireworks the Department of Public Works sets off down the river. 

They arrive together, but move off in separate directions; he heads over to say hello to Archie, who chats with Reggie near the keg, and Betty walks over to greet Veronica and Cheryl. He loses track of her, but assumes she’ll find him again at some point during the evening. He fights all the instincts telling him to find a corner and settle in.

At Reggie’s request, he ends up—as ever—in charge of rolling. He wonders how he got this reputation if until very recently he interacted regularly with—at most—four people. Maybe Reggie’s gabby; hell, he _knows_ Reggie is gabby, he hardly has to wonder. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


As he rolls, Jug senses a presence at his left elbow. He tries not to jump when he turns to find Cheryl hovering less than a foot behind him.

“Hobo,” she greets him, and he nods his head once in greeting. Cheryl is best dealt with as though encountering a predator—play dead. 

“Is this your supply?” she continues.

He looks up from his work. “No, this is Reggie’s.” 

Cheryl nods and inspects her nails, but makes no move to retreat. Jughead feels confused, and for a moment wonders if mutual silence is the way to go in a situation like this. 

Looking up from her nail beds, Cheryl meets his eyes with a steely expression. 

“I hear you’re spending time with my cousin.”

Jughead drops his gaze to his hands, feigning concentration, but his heart beats quickly. Before he can catch up, Cheryl barrels on.

“I just hope you’re treating her well. I won’t let Cousin Betty settle for second best.” She purses her lips and scans her guests. Speaking a little softer, she continues. “Betty accepts a lot more shit in life than she really ought to, almost to a fault.” Cheryl shrugs, as though to herself. "She's human." 

Jughead nods, affecting a nonchalance he does not feel. 

Cheryl sighs dramatically, and he’s reminded so much of a midcentury Hollywood diva he imagines how she might look in black and white, a fifteen-foot high face on a screen. But Cheryl isn’t Norma Desmond, not by a mile; she has both a voice _and_ a face. He also can’t stop her by flipping the on-off switch on the projector.

“Your house is nice.” He hardly knows where the words come from before they’re falling out of his mouth, but once they’re out he decides they are as good as any others. 

Cheryl narrows her eyes at him, and he feels suddenly smaller than an ant under her red espadrille. 

“Very West Egg,” he thinks to say. He feels nothing short of inane, but hopes Cheryl cannot smell fear. 

Cheryl’s expression changes only minutely, but he still notices. It’s almost a softening. 

“And where’s the Valley of Ashes then, Jones?” She asks him disdainfully, and he’s shocked to feel himself smile. He shrugs, licks the edge of a rolling paper. 

“I dunno; where are your parents?” 

She regards him for a further moment before saying, with great finality, “Large parties are so intimate, aren’t they?” She swans off in a fragrant cloud of what Jughead thinks might be tuberose before he can summon a response. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Picking a flake off the tip of his tongue with his thumb and index finger, Jughead hears Betty’s voice getting closer, trading back and forth with Kevin. He passes a joint to Archie, who sparks a lighter. 

Jughead turns to greet her, and she smiles as she slides into his lap. Instinctually, his hand wraps around her and rests upon her thigh. 

He realizes that they have not spent much time together among others, and his eyes roam over the people gathered around Thornhill’s back patio. No one looks at them. 

He _does_ notice Archie dart a peek at him out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t turn from his conversation with Moose, but Jughead thinks Archie sends him a small smile, and he is thankful to his friend for a measure of uncharacteristic tact. 

Archie passes the joint back to him, and he offers it to Betty. She shakes her head.

“Shotgun?”

He nods, blows the smoke into her mouth. He watches her watching him, and when she leans back he is reluctant to break her gaze. Her eyes close when she coughs a little, but she laughs and the sound makes him smile again. 

“Keep it in your pants, please,” Cheryl implores them from behind Archie, waving a red-taloned hand. “Not before the fireworks. Ideally not here, either.” 

Jughead takes his cue from Betty, who just grins. Her arm wraps around his shoulder to maintain her balance on his thigh, and she turns to continue talking to Kevin. 

He rests his chin on her shoulder, and with his nose this close to her neck he can smell her sunscreen. 

He breathes deeply, exhales slowly. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The epigraph is from _Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture_ by Grace Elizabeth Hale. I literally changed it seconds before hitting publish because someone (who knows who she is) sent it to me, and indeed—it was so fucking perfect. 
> 
> I found great joy in writing this; I hope it brings you some in the reading.
> 
> Betty's half of the summer to follow.


End file.
